Viacom's over $1 billion lawsuit, accusing Google and its video sharing Web site, YouTube, of 'massive intentional copyright infringement' is not only a big challenge to Google, but is being seen as part of a bigger battle between traditional and Internet media companies vying for a piece of the same pie.
The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Google and YouTube allow users upload popular shows, thus threatening to make the video sharing site a major entertainment and advertising outlet. The suit seeks an injunction against further damages and violations by Google and YouTube.
Indeed, Viacom has been YouTube's most vocal critic in all the months of negotiating for payment for the use of its programming by the latter. Up until last month, when the company demanded that YouTube pull down nearly 1,60,000 unauthorized clips of its shows, uploaded by users, and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
According to Viacom, the lawsuit is the fall out of a whole lot of unproductive negotiation with YouTube. The media conglomerate alleges that YouTube typically avoids taking proactive steps to curtail infringement; thereby generating good amount of traffic and revenue for itself, while shifting losses onto the victims of its infringement.
Viacom maintains YouTube does not prevent copyrighted content from being uploaded onto its site, while Google insists that YouTube respects the copyrights at issue in the Viacom case.
The search giant has in fact issued a statement, saying they will not let this suit hamper the continuing growth of YouTube.
Google bought YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion last November. The video sharing Web site has licensing deals with major record companies, but continues to face flak from media majors. Google, which is itself tangled in an unholy mesh of lawsuits by book publishers, online news publishers, and even small time Web site operators, says it will offer new technology to identify pirated videos on YouTube. However there is no timeline given by the search giant.
All said and done, if the courts rule in favor of Viacom in the present suit, the ruling might encourage a lot of other companies to consider similar legal action against YouTube, making matters even more dicey for Google.
What's more, Viacom seems to be picking up allies on its way... For instance, News Corp and Time Warner. A News Corp spokesperson reportedly expressed the view that they too have faced a similar situation with respect to YouTube, and that the company supports Viacom's right to protect its own content in whatever way it needs to
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